The Analyst

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  • Data Science & Analytics

Meet Kahlianne Jones, Senior Innovation Strategist, Analytics

In a data-driven marketing environment, actionable analytics matter. When you have the right data, organized and helpfully visualized, data-driven decisions happen. I’ve been at Level Agency for two years and have spent most of that time tackling complicated data sets and measuring performance. I am passionate about the puzzles that data presents and finding creative ways to break down complex problems in ways that all of our stakeholders can understand.

When the agency formed the Level Innovate team, and asked if I’d like to push the envelope of our analytics capabilities, I was in. In my new role, I’ll build data and analytics products, resources, and capabilities that empower media buyers, account managers and clients to make efficient, sophisticated data-driven decisions. I’ve worked at other marketing agencies and in IT consulting, but Level is special. The agency embraces data and technology throughout every aspect of marketing. Plus, I already had a few ideas for projects that can help us drive performance. Now, I’m more dedicated than ever to making them happen.

I love dashboards. I’m not kidding. One of my most important responsibilities is creating custom performance analytics dashboards shared between Level Agency and our clients. What can look like a boring series of graphs can, in the right hands, be powerful. They summarize data quickly and can even answer questions we haven’t thought to ask yet. They can frame a trending data table in a way that tells a story. I’m already investigating dashboard integrations that enable streamlined creative testing across client accounts. Once deployed, we can spin up new creative as soon as a statistically significant result is reached. And that’s just the first step. We’re putting our heads together on sentiment testing, looking at the ways in which ad messages resonate across platforms.

The analytics driving our dashboards are evolving in incredibly sophisticated ways. Predictive analytics, for example, can help to drive budget pacing towards performance optimization, predicting when performance will be high or low and establishing budgets that take full advantage of those anticipated trends. Analyses like customer regression, integrated into daily strategy, can enable even more precise audience targeting and messaging.   

I can see a world where our growing machine learning capabilities are seamlessly integrated into our optimization processes. For instance, AI could examine creative and determine whether tone and sentiment align with our goals for a campaign (i.e. “This ad is supposed to sound encouraging. Does it?”). Our ideas may be big, but they aren’t far-fetched.

Automation tools, combined with strong analytics and the increased sophistication of media buying platforms like Google, create a multiplier effect that maximizes human discovery.  This is the future of marketing. I get to drive these projects, which will ultimately empower Level-ers across agency teams to make decisions with as much insight as possible. Launching the Innovation team accelerates our research toward even more ambitious goals.

I’m very lucky that I work in an agency firmly planted in the future and committed to doing better by our clients. I can’t wait to share more as we launch our first experiments in 2020!

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